Marriage vs. Cohabitation

I think that cohabitation is a great plan for a couple who are thinking about getting married. I think they should live together for about two years before making any real plans to get married. That way by the end of the first year, both should be pretty comfortable with each other and used to the way their partner handles things. It also gives them plenty of opportunity to get out before they make the huge investment that a wedding and a marriage.

Personal experience:
I was dating this guy for about five years. We started talking about getting married by the end of the first year. After three years, we moved in together. Recently, I moved to another state because of my education and the opportunity for what amounted to a free ride. If I hadn't lived with him, we would probably still be together, and I would be just as blind to his habits as I was when we started dating. But now I know what kind of person he is, and that helped form my decision to break the relationship. I don't think I would have known that if we hadn't lived together.

So yeah. Simple way, without all the explanation: Cohabitation, then marriage. It's like a trial run.

Crap, man, I am beginning to wonder if you do really talk like this in normal conversation. An aural delight, the ladies must call you. Cunning linguist.

Anyway, I learned somewhat about Zazen Buddhism today and a portion of the theories some of those meditative processes employ and I thought of our correspondence. Specifically, it was to think of something negative and to try to think of an antidote or positive reaction to it.

Thusly began my search into the beginning of this animosity, which I admit I instigated. One moment, I must go defecate in the middle here, but I shall return. Wonderful, I am back.

I think you explained about the capital letters in your last that got deleted and also a reference to the Russian masters and perhaps some ideological collaboration they may have had?

I desire to read what small portion of the books that inspired your erudition that I can, barring, of course, the dictionary.

It began with Ethics, I think. Please, refrain from your seemingly Newtonian method in speech with me if you do answer to this with a literary list, because I can't understand the things you type, often. I am but a layman endeavouring to reach up from ignorance.

If it would be more pleasing, my facebook is under K. Safdar Hussain, send me a message or poke me (whatever that does) and I'd be happy to correspond, assuming you also frequent that attention hotspot. New ideas are always welcome, especially when it comes to the so-called Classics, as I find that their meaning changes as I age. It is a neverending cycle: the same words again and again, and only a fraction more comprehension each time.

I would like to read your point of view.

Cheers

I know people who lived together without marriage that didn't make it, but I also know people who ended up divorced. Likewise, I know couples who chose cohabitation, have been living together happily for decades, and have children between them. I also know married couples who have made similar commitments. The potential and results of these relationships have nothing to do with some pieces of metal and a couple of signatures on a piece of paper, the culprits are commitment and love. They are not mutually inclusive with marriage, nor are they mutually exclusive with cohabitation.

Evidently, a highly intelligent and literate conversation that I was having with Dooshby has been expunged from the Boards. It is interesting that his engaging and inviting encomium for my work (his first epistle to me; what a great guy!) has not also been deleted. But if the expurgated conversation was far too cerebral for this discussion board, then Doosbhy's original letter would surely need to be omitted as well. It is a supererogation of Dooshby's peculiar genius.

Marriage is an evolving institution. For example, I could, back in the day, have married four chicks at once. In fact, I could have married children, waiting for them to mature and then consummate when they are of a reasonable age. I imagine marriage was a way for people to rationalize their desire to have sex and proclaim god or their city or king or whatever wanted it.

Given, marriage has been around longer than religion, but it could easily be used as a means to obtain an untouchable beauty or, politically, to unite two kingdoms, countries, whatever. I see it as more of a way to rationalize yourself to the public ("See? Now we are married! Our lust is justified!"), than as a healthy partnership. If I truly love a woman, I am able to keep myself faithful to her. What's more, I am able to trust in her faithfulness to me. There is no need to marry her, just as there is no need to wear genital cuffs or for her to cover her face in public or what have you.

Forcing a woman to wear a veil or stay home all day is a way for insecure or disloyal men to further indulge themselves in self-pity or promiscuity, or both.

All that crap being said, I see the merit of marriage in a community or family. Yes, it is a good foundation for trust and such to pass on to our children, but the stigma is that unmarried couples are seen as unclean or sinful. This is stupid.

Cohabitation allows you to understand more than your feeling of love for someone. I feel that love is not enough of a reason to marry another person. If you marry solely for love, you are gimping yourself, plain and simple. There are billions of people on this earth and to lock yourself to a single one on the basis of an intangible (and fleeting) emotion is impractical. Cohabitation is a way for couples to test their love, to come to understand one another's true face without the possibility of losing one's possessions (as in a divorce) if they find that they are incompatible in a household environment.

What is key is taking personal responsibility for yourself without having to be held up by some public oath or institution. Marriage should only be done when you are sure of yourself, your material assets, your self-esteem, and your confidence in the ability for you and your partner to apply yourselves to a community as a single organism. I cannot take responsibility for a wife before I learn to take responsibility for myself.

What I see is a lot of young people getting hitched too early and realizing what they really want when they mature (which could take decades) and either 1.) holding back, amputating their true desire or 2.) resorting to infidelity (physical or otherwise) and thus devastating their relationship.

Men and women need to learn that segregation of the sexes is a worthless endeavour. Let them get together and mingle in every aspect before they decide to swear before god, their family, their king, etc. that they are willing to take responsibility for one another.

If marriage is just a legal formality, then screw it. There is no point.

Marriage is more than that.
It's a life-long commitment. It calls both parties to restrain self-centeredness and self-indulgence. Inside the frames of a marriage, you are called to make your spouse's needs your needs, and to reject any temptations to infidelity or actions that may hurt your husband/wife.

Marriage shapes us into people with values that tell us to think beyond ourselves. It is one of the best kinds of training for our participation in society. In taking this institution seriously, we are encouraged to take part in a relationship that disciplines us and curbs our self-centered tendencies.

Cohabitation does not do this.
It does not restrain our inclination to self-serve.
The tendency in such a relationship is that the individual dictates the status of the relationship according to personal opinion/needs. The glue that holds this sort of relationship together is the individual consent of each party, not a joint effort to succeed, and the relationship can fall apart the instant one person decides to give up. Yes, two people living together can love each other very much, but the door is left fairly open for abandonment. I do not believe that joint commitment reaches its highest potenital in this case.

Marriage gives the couple an umbrella of responsibility that they both must hold up. If one person wants to release his grip, the two have to seriously assess the situation and see if they can keep the umbrella up, or if they should let go and accept the rain (divorce).

Marriage is the stamp that establishes a mutual fight against self-interest with the goal of sacrificing for the whole.

Its implications are such that, like I said before, we are disciplined into truly loosening the grip on what we want, and considering the concerns of another.

Why is this important?
To reference a pamphlet I was given on marriage, such a relationship is healthy for social order. If people learn discipline and self-sacrificing love for another, society can improve. If such qualities are degenerating in the world, individuals may become increasingly self-serving, and society may face greater difficulties to advance.

Unfortunately, not everyone is born a commited Gandhi or a loving Mother Teresa. But the institute of marriage is a great practice that can help shape laymen into contributing and even sacrificing members of society. In learning to place our spouse before ourselves, we can learn to further value our neighbors as well.

Can this quality be learned elsewhere?
Sure.

But when it comes down to marriage versus cohabitation, I say marriage is the healthier choice, for the individual and the whole.

Interesting implications--I like the idea of bringing in a legal perspective--I'm coming to see cohabitation as too idealistic of a situation in a world riddled with realistic problems such as those you've mentioned---"proof of ownership, maintenance of costs, division of expenses." I feel that I might have to settle for a marriage because of these logistics. It seems that cohabitation would be the easy way to not deal with the details, but I think it could also be the most difficult.

Do you think the legal consequences would be comparatively more in the dissolving of cohabitation or a marriage situation? Because I'm sure that marriage would also have its issues.

Haha--it was only a feeble attempt because I held back my friend. How can you be the judge of what is a farce on humanity? Because you've read some literature? Although you call my attempt feeble, you make no attempt to counter my claim on whether you've personally ever felt love--

Although I did enjoy your verbose bad-mouthing, I feel that we are at crossroads. You are a strong believer in this Love of Absence (because of your experience reading) and you have heard my views. So I feel that this argument (on love in a marriage vs. cohabitation debate) has run its course.

There has yet to be any set rules pertaining to cohabitation- I remember reading from the Law Society a few years ago that although it has been attempted, since 2002, there has been very nominal significance in creating a set structure-perhaps that is why cohabitation may seem appealing, because there are no true restrictions, as opposed to "being wed." Simultaneously, in a legal outlook, I only see cohabitation as adverse. Taking into account the difficulties that would exist in joint loans and pensions..even considering what would happen post-breakup, it just seems that this yield more complications than anything else. In the case of a break-up, extrication of property; there would be no proof of ownership, maintenance of costs, division of expenses..etc. I feel like such agreements exist because of a couples inability to figure it out on their own. Of course, if you consider what is bringing the two individuals together, regardless of the title "marriage" or "cohabitation," I guess what should only matter is the fact that the two are in love..

'I don't know if iqbalicarus has felt such love..'

What a feeble attempt at churlishness;

What you're describing isn't complex; it is burlesque, a farce on humanity. The old Monastic Poets had one thing right: they apprehended Christian love through the tropes of 'a disease of the mind.' Don't you see how ludicrous the effusion, 'I love thee,' is? You don't even have access to a 'Thou'; all that you apprehend is a fucking simulacrum! You're lorded over by a Golem (and I wonder what its name is: Meth or Aemeth?)

If your Beloved is an Eidolon, then what, precisely, is the World? To allow yourself to be subsumed under the Negative Presence of another consciousness is to abjure the world that both of you inhabit. What you call 'Love' is preternaturally Evil, a hysterical farrago, a parody of Love as it should be: the Love 'of the rose for the nightingale, for the chevalier who never comes, of the serf for the chatelaine, of Rudolf for the Lady of Tripoli'. The Love, in short, of Absence.

Authentic relationships, amongst authentic people (as distinct from automatons) do not involve Transcendence of any kind: they are immanent, 'Pure Being;' they occur as interlocutions and copulations, not as Sighs.

Your love, by the way, remains an Angelic Love: unsexed, androgynous, etiolated.